Traveling on a budget typically entails traveling during the off season, or at least, shoulder season. The benefit is that flights and accommodations are typically cheaper. The downside is that the destination may effectively be shut down, particularly if it is a seasonal resort. Continue reading “OBX”

I suppose that if you are making a trip across the country in large part to visit one particular lighthouse, you’d be expected to take a ton of photographs of said lighthouse over the two days during which you are in the area. Continue reading “Cape Hatteras Lighthouse”

Coming in at less than six months after our three-week trip wining and dining our way through France, it was going to be difficult for Charleston, South Carolina to impress. Nonetheless, our expectations were high given all the press that Charleston was getting. Continue reading “Chuck town, South Carolina”

It’s getting to be around that time of year when the pastry chefs at the San Francisco Fairmont bake up hundreds of pounds of gingerbread for the two-story gingerbread house that each year accompanies the 23 foot Christmas tree that festoons the lobby.

Tucked out of sight in the mountains east of Bridgeport, California, Bodie State Historic Park lies among nondescript and bleak surroundings. Apparently there was gold there, though it remains a mystery to me what anyone was doing there in the first place to have discovered gold that was underground. Rumors of gold can seem to make mankind to do all sorts of things that would otherwise be considered foolhardy. Maybe some gold had washed down Bodie Creek–a seasonal flow of which there was no trace of during our visit–so it made sense to search further upstream.

I have been attending Blue Angels air shows since the 1970s when they flew A-4 Skyhawks, often chasing them to airfields miles from home just to get a glimpse. Then I moved to the Bay Area and every year, the show would come to me. Continue reading “SF Fleet Week”

Larry Ellison may own 98% of Lana’i, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it. It is not like Mr. Ellison has plastered his name all over the island as some other rich folk might. And though you might expect that private ownership would translate into massive development, the absence of a reliable source of fresh water has so far capped growth. Continue reading “Lana’i Travel Guide”